Reviews

Bringing back the fun features of the 70s' hit men suspensers -- nudity, foreign locales, innocents and innocence betrayed -- The American fails to update its story to satisfy, if not our sophistication, at least our desire for something new in the genre. Clooney's fine, the women are pretty, the other guys scary in their balefulness or just their everyday normality, and the locale is shot in a way that makes us appreciate its beauty without really fostering a desire to visit (there's bucolic and then there's boring!). But the story's end is too clearly seen too soon with nary a variation on what is now taken for granted: a killer of innocents will live in hell, as the priest says. A murderous killer will likely die there too.

Inception is mildly interesting but emotionally flat. There's nothing DiCaprio's character does at the end that he couldn't have done at the beginning of his story. He hasn't undergone an emotional arc at all, he's just gone through a lot of noisy, silly plot machinations that add up to too many action sequences (though some are fun) looking for a movie. The "psychological" stuff in the movie is 1950s Freudian -- really it's at the level of a Looney Tunes cartoon's parody of analysis in terms of a real look at what dreams are -- with certain phrases repeated so often ("they're not real, they're a projection;" "If you're killed in a dream, you wake up") you'd think the audience was taken as morons. The story is needlessly complicated, with its three- level examination of one story (a father-son relationship) given short shrift, and the DiCaprio story never fully wrapped up given the director's silly ending where he refuses to ultimately define what's a dream and what's not. The movie will be praised to the skies because early reviewers want to be seen as hip and sophisticated with what is admittedly better fare than the usual Hollywood summer fluff (viz, Predators). But this movie is as much a failure as Benjamin Buttons: overly arcane story-telling by a talented director who's given an unlimited budget to make a story no one is brave enough to say is banal and turgid and opaque. The Dark Knight has tons of emotion (even if the plot is weak, especially in the final third). Memento was a thinking man's story if ultimately full of holes and devoid of any real emotion. Inception has good acting, great effects and a plot that may or may not make sense -- but why would anyone take the time to decipher it? Because the story carries no emotion, it all feels like a trick the director-writer thinks he's playing on us. It's The Game with another level or two or three of plot, but just as devoid of real emotion. While you may not be bored, you won't be satisfied, so it's still a waste of two and one-half hours.

A refreshing look at most every subject it covers, and the field is a broad one: baby- boomers and aging parents; adult brothers and sisters; the strains of immigration on Western societies. The set-up is cute but not revolutionary – a humanitarian in his 80s allows a young Moldovan woman and her daughter to move in with him to help regularize her immigration status. Soon thereafter he marries her.

A Hollywood movie would have taken this premise and played it for all its (admittedly funny) sitcom elements. And this French version has some fun with that idea, too – all the more when Dad's status as a new Viagra user becomes clear.

But the beauty of this film is that the real story belongs to the old man's son and daughter. They respond in unexpected ways to a series of moves by Dad that isolate them from his life and their inheritance, and in doing so, grow closer to each other. Sibling rivalry and recriminations are dealt with, yes, but over café au lait, or vodka and caviar, or in the more emotionally charged roles when they themselves must play unpopular parent. But growing up means accepting the loss of your parents and, if you're lucky, coming to really know your adult siblings.

The ending is fitting but unexpected and, in another refreshing un-American manner, deals with a solution that many would find politically incorrect. This film reaffirms family solidarity as more important than money or modernism. While every character is human and sympathetically portrayed, there's an intriguing sociological subtext too.

From an American point of view, this film is foreign in the best sense of the word. It's entertaining in a manner Hollywood fears has no payoff: a movie about adults realizing problems, even if borne in childhood, must be solved in an adult manner. And that can mean some good people get hurt. They only real villains are our own outmoded ways of dealing with our issues. Other than City Island, can you think of another American film this year that seconds this idea, even before you add humor?

Movie's best asset is its structural variation: two teens steal a carriage, with a four year-old boy inside who is injured and then killed. The teens go to jail and after eight years one of them is released. We follow him until, an hour into the film the story backs up and focuses on the mother whose child was kidnapped all those years ago by our lead character. Now we stay with her until this storyline merges with the young man who snatched her child. The final act is action-packed (by the standards of this film) and fills in what happened to the kidnapped child all those years ago.

Unfortunately our young male lead is, after his release from prison, not terribly active in his new life, slinking around passively with a one-note, dour look on his face. It's something of a mystery why the beautiful pastor at the church where he works would be drawn to him; in any case, it's a relief to team up with the wronged woman at the midpoint. She's far more active, a little crazy (who wouldn't be after losing a child?) and not easy for her husband or two adopted kids to live with.

Unfortunately, the longueur of the initial fifty minutes of the film is never really overcome. The story's essential sadness, the ponderous characters and the evil banality of the final revelation all make for what is essentially an unrewarded effort. The story's structure is interesting and fun – there are small flashforwards and –backs throughout that work effectively – and the novel storytelling might have worked with a slightly more dynamic plot. But what really sinks things is the performance of Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen as the child killer (for which the director must take the blame). His portrayal, while believable, is enervating and not charismatic enough to carry even half a movie.

A wonderful set-up and a delightful cast engage us fully but because the characters are reacting to an initially off-screen protagonist, and there's some lax plotting near the end, the film fizzles a bit before its (mostly) satisfying conclusion.

A more purposeful attempt by the main character, a doctor, or anyone to solve the mystery of the poisonous letters would streamline the action somewhat and save us from the serendipitous action of randomly arriving missives.

The two-pronged solution to the mystery is just barely acceptable, but the characters involved are so sympathetic we'll take it as served.

Beautifully shot – almost too beautifully given the mundane storyline – and unevenly acted, the film deserves kudos for an intelligent rendering of an adult problem: the post-traumatic stress of a returning WW2 vet, and the miseries it puts him and his wife through.

The dramatic thrust of the film – erroneously labeled European by some viewers – is hampered, not by its slow unfolding, but by passive characters. John Savage is sometimes strong and sometimes not in his portrayal, but he's been stymied by a script that has him only desultorily going after various goals. Maria, a far better if still uneven performance by Nastassja Kinski (whose talent is strong; the inconsistency is clearly the director's fault), also only gradually commits to her husband. That's fine and real but with only minor characters (Vincent Spano, Keith Caradine) strongly after an objective, the movie is moribund at its center for much of its running time. (Robert Mitchum's character and performance are both dismal.)

The film gathers some tension once Nastassja is mit Kind, and Savage's predicament reaches the breaking point. The resolution is somewhat satisfying though not entirely credible (Savage feels more like a life-long alcoholic at this point) and comes about through his chance meeting with Caradine's philanderer.

More literary than filmic in its construction, the movie's best feature is Nastassja's performance. But because her life, like her husband's, feels more acted upon than really lived, the movie just lumbers.

The title's accurate and the movie does nothing to dispel the notion that "hero" Jay Baruchel would ever end up with "10" Alice Eve. But the movie entertains us as it tries its best to make the idea plausible, and the funny writing and strong acting make the fantasy worth enjoying.

This is still the kind of contemporary R-rated comedy that keeps the F-word in the air constantly but shudders at the idea of showing us a sex scene where the woman isn't wearing a bra. But at least the cussing's delivered by a likable posse, most notably T J Miller, who carries the nickname Stainer, for which, unfortunately, we are provided an explanation. There are some funny set pieces involving two-man genital shaving and a dog's penchant for human ejaculate, but director Smith sometimes plays them out too long – something he repeats with Baruchel, letting the guy mug his way into Jim Carrey territory when that's not his forte. Indeed, Baruchel's a little soft as the core of this film – he's not even strong "nerdy" leading man material. But the writing is swift and funny enough for him to hold his own, at least until the drawn-out finale, which is handed over to T J Miller and the sprightly Alice Eve. She's definitely a "hard 10" but we might have more easily believed Miller's character could have landed her, than just delivering her to Baruchel. Still, these nerd-club comedies are fantasies, and when they're as likable and funny as this, we'll forgive them most anything. But let's burn those bras, bros!

The experienced moviegoer will feel some apprehension even before viewing this film. It's a first-time feature director with an ambitious story but a budget well below the studio tent- pole level, a lead star who isn't quite the highest of the high A (and whom we don't think of when we think action), and a side-kick whose strange acting technique, a kind of maudlin distractedness, seems particularly ill-suited for a genre picture.

The apprehension is well placed, but things turn out even worse than one imagined. The film's art design is ugly, modern and dystopian of course, but not in an interesting way (a la Bladerunner), and the film stock itself appears grimy (even on a new print). The actors are generally out at sea, miscast and understandably befuddled by a tone that ranges from serious action, to silly (embarrassing) buddy pic, to Guy Ritchie-wannabe frozen frames and pretentious hipster dialog. The characters aren't especially sympathetic: their unarmed victims get shot like fish in a barrel so we don't ever buy the "heroic" status of the protagonists. Jude Law's uxorious character is henpecked by a nasty, dour-looking Carice van Houten (so wonderful in The Black Book) and our empathy for him isn't heightened by his friendship with the psychotic Forrest Whittaker character, who delivers the head-tilting wide grins and lachrymose pouts he usually does, only this time as an improbable violent action figure. It all makes for slow going with 45 minutes needed for a shift into the 2nd act and a story we all knew was going to happen anyway, with the hunter becoming the hunted. Things don't improve here either with the filmmakers determined to make Alice Braga unappealing, and doing their best to keep the action going with expected twists and louder music.

Can't tell you how it ends, I was driving home long before the finale.

A stolid Western offering minor interest because it focuses more on love and jealousy than action and violence, Jubal still feels like a long day in the saddle. The acting is generally according to type and nothing more: Glenn Ford is laconic if not emotionally stunted, with eyes that never display any emotion; Ernest Borgnine is better, a bit tamped down from his usual volatile self, though he stills careens from best-buddy to big threat; Valerie French is terrible as the bad Canadian (!) hussy but the role is mostly a device to animate Rod Steiger's jealous Pinky. He's the best character in the movie, but still one dimensional with no arc: bad to the bone from beginning till the end. Ford's eponymous Jubal character actually has a backstory out of Sergio Leone (a mother who wanted him to drown) but he reveals it in an unmotivated scene with Felicia Farr's young Mormon. (As always, the real fault lies with the screenwriter.) More interesting to watch than the characters is the beautiful Jackson Hole scenery, a welcome change from the dusty California backdrop of most oaters.

Unrequited love is the theme, but in a twist, or from an angle that's decidedly French. A man marries even when he knows his true love is getting wed to another at the same time and place (a double wedding saves money). As he will come to admit later, the fault is all his because he didn't love enough to make a play for his amour when she was still available. At any rate, his love for her stays true even as she takes up with yet another lover in addition to her husband. Yet there's no judgmental tone as we observe her actions, just a woman doing what she wants, or at times, must. Our eponymous hero, Toni, finally gets to prove his love through sacrifice for the woman and his godchild, fulfilling the norms of the Latin melting pot that Provence was at this time. The movie sets up the story wonderfully; indeed, the best part of the film is the efficient and sly way the story is put in motion when all we think is happening is an introduction of characters. The slower ensuing pace, lack of music, stagy scenes and silent film-like shots all date the movie; it's not a timeless classic. But it's still an enjoyable, efficient testament to universal themes told through a decidedly un-American prism.

A complete mess. Overlong, boring and offering no resolution, this film is more than bad; it's an embarrassment. That it's been so highly praised internationally is the kind of "affirmative action" pandering that occasionally strikes film festivals; it's success at home just confirms Koreans flock to bad movies too.

The major responsibility of a director is to present a movie that is of a piece, that is, it is unified as a story in tone, time and place, and offers a believable and interesting plot. This movie is all over the place tonally: it has moments of madcap wannabe Jackie Chan-style buffoonery with Three Stooges-level relationships among the leads, offers serious policier pretensions for most its second half. As for running time: the whole thing is incredibly long, all the more so for a film that offers no real suspense, no threat to its protagonists and clues that come out of nowhere, like the female officer's sudden, out-of-the-blue discovery that a certain song is played whenever the murderer strikes. (And we're asked to believe that these cops are dimwitted enough to think that the murderer himself may have requested the song with a postcard that gives his accurate name and address!)

It doesn't matter that the movie is built on a true case. So what? You don't go and make a movie about an unsolved crime unless it offers some other insight other than the banal idea that the serial killer-rapist could be anyone (which of course isn't true; we're not all killers). After slogging through an interminable running time, to then be offered no resolution (even after a meaningless flash-forward to ten or so years later) is an anticlimax of the worst kind.

An absolute piece of total pretension with bungling characters and lousy story-telling (e.g., the retarded suspect obviously has been an eyewitness to a killing but the cops realize this two hours after you will), this movie may sour you for other, good Korean films. Don't let that happen.